The present disclosure relates to vehicle emergency call systems, and more particularly to asserting support for telematics capabilities in vehicle emergency call systems. In some vehicle emergency call systems, telematics data (e.g., sensor readings and other data) may be transmitted from an intelligent vehicle terminal to a central service for processing. For example, a terminal associated with a vehicle experiencing a collision may transmit location and airbag deployment data over a wireless communication system to a public safety answering point (PSAP) in connection with a request for emergency services. In some systems, the data may be transmitted to a third-party service center, which may then convey some or all of the data to a PSAP.
The present disclosure also relates to metadata associated with the telematics data (sometimes referred to as “control data”), which a PSAP may further provide back to the vehicle terminal. For example, the PSAP may send an acknowledgement that the telematics data was satisfactorily received. The metadata may also include requests for the vehicle terminal to perform one or more actions, such as sending or resending certain telematics data, unlocking the vehicle doors, flashing the lights of the vehicle, and so forth. Because of the wide ranging functionality of different vehicles, however, the PSAP may not be aware of what types of actions that the vehicle terminal is and is not capable of performing. As such, the PSAP may send many requests or send a single request many times to a vehicle terminal, not knowing whether the vehicle terminal can actually perform the requested action(s). In other cases, the PSAP may never send a certain type of request because it is unaware that the vehicle terminal can perform a certain action.